Their lives were more primitive than those of any human beings, for they knew how to make onty the most basic stone and wood tools, and were not even able to make fire for themselves (although they could use and maintain it if they found it).
Paradoxically, this very primitiveness makes them interesting to anthropologists, who see in them an il ustration of how humanity's ancient ancestors must have lived.
Despite their lack of weapons more formidable than chipped stones and sticks with fire-hardened points, sims often proved dangerous to colonists in the early days of European settlement of the New World.
As they learned to cope with attacks from bands of sims the settlers also had to learn new farming techniques needed for soils and climates different from those of their native lands. Hunger was their constant companion in the early years of the colonies.
Another reason for this was the necessity of bringing al seed grain across the Atlantic until surpluses could be built up. The Americas offered no native equivalent of wheat, rye, or barley for settlers to use.
Sims, of course, knew nothing of agriculture.
Nevertheless, the Spaniards and Portuguese succeeded in establishing colonies in Central and South ; America during the sixteen century.
The first English settlers in What is now the Federated Commonwealths was at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1600.
From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths, by Ernest Simpson.
Reproduced by permission.
A Different Flesh
AFTER THIRTY MILD English summers, July in Virginia smote Edward Wingfield like a blast from hell. Sweat poured off him as he tramped through the forest a few miles from Jamestown in search of game. It clung, greasily, in the humid heat.
He held his crossbow cocked and ready. He also carried a loaded pistol in each boot, but the crossbow was silent and accurate at longer range, and it wasted no precious powder. The guns were only for emergencies.
Wingfield studied the dappled shadows. A little past noon, he guessed.
Before long he would have to turn round and head home for the colony. He had had a fairly good day: two rabbits, several small birds, and a fat gray squirrel hung from his belt.
He looked forward to fal and the harvest. If al went well this year, the colony would final y have enough wheat for bread and porridge and ale. How he wished, how al the Europeans wished, that this godforsaken new world offered wheat or barley or even oats of its own.
But it did not, so al seed grain had to cross the Atlantic. Jamestown had lived mostly on game and roots for three years now. Lean and leathery, Wingfield had forgotten what a hot, fresh loaf tasted like.
He remembered only that it was wonderful.
Something stirred in the undergrowth ahead. He froze. The motion came again. He spied a fine plump rabbit, its beady black eyes alert, its ears cocked for danger.
Moving slowly and steadily, hardly breathing, he raised the crossbow to his shoulder, aimed down the bolt. Once the rabbit looked toward him.
He stopped moving again until it turned its head away.
He pressed the trigger. The bolt darted and slammed into a treetrunk a finger's breadth above the rabbit's ear. The beast bounded away.
'Hellfire!' Wingfield dashed after it, yanking out one of his pistols.
He almost tripped over the outflung branch of a grapevine. The vine's main stock was as big around as his calf. Virginia grapes, and the rough wine the colonists made from them, were among the few things that helped keep Jamestown bearable.
The panic-stricken rabbit, instead of diving into the bushes for cover and losing itself there, burst past a screen of brush into a clearing.
'Your last mistake, beastly' Wingfield cried in triumph. He crashed through the brush himself, swinging up the gun as he did so.
Then the rabbit was almost to the other side of the clearing.
He saw it thrashing in the grass there. Wingfiel paused, puzzled: had a ferret torn out it’s throat as it scampered along, oblivious to everything but its pursuer?
Then his grip tightened on the trigger, for a sim emerged from a thicket and ran toward the rabbit.
It had not seen him. It bent down by the writhing beast if smashed in the rabbit's head with a rock. Undoubtedly it had used another to bring the animal down; sims were deadly accurate throwing sharpened stones.
Wingfield stepped into the clearing. The colony was too hungry to let food go.
The sim heard him. It rose, clutching the bloody rock in a large, knobby-knuclcled hand. It was about as tall as the Englishman, and naked but for its own abundant hair. Its long, chinless jaw opened to let out a hoot of dismay Wingfield gestured with the pistol. Sims had no fore heads to speak of above their bone-ridged brows, but they had learned the colonists' weapons slew at a distance greater than they could cast their rocks. Usually, these days they retreated instead of proving the lesson over again.
This one, though, stood its ground, baring broad, yellow teeth in a threatening grimace. Wingfield gestured again, more sharply, and hoped he seemed more confident than he felt. If his first shot missed, or even wounded but failed to kill, he would have to grab for his other gun while the sim charged, and pistol-range was not that much more than a stone's throw.
